This week we mainly worked on getting the Character Customization Screen and Party Screen together. They don't look like much right now but Kevin is working on the graphics which will make them much more appealing. This isn't the final layout either so if it feels a bit clunky don't worry, we're still working on it.

You will now start out at the Party Screen. By selecting a character and clicking "Join Party" you will add them to your group which you will take into battle. We've given you another random skill character to play with so now you can have anywhere from 1-4 characters in your party. There's currently no "Remove" option so just hit "Back" to clear your party if you want to change it.

If you click on Hero at the top it will take you to the Character Customization Screen which lets you do the same things as before except now you can do it to each character separately and there's a fun little option in there for showcasing the character.Note: The male doesn't have any options for Hair or Cloak yet and currently your character settings won't be saved. We'll be adding all this soon.

We've also added several new weapons that you'll see the characters using. The skill list has been moved to the "Play HTD!" page so you can view it while playing. It also just makes more sense to be there rather than picking up so much space here every week. I'll be updating it as we progress as well as posting notes for them here.

Development on the Skill Selection and Skill Behavior Screens as begun and is currently in the design phase. The Skill Selections Screen is pretty self-explanatory but the Skill Behavior Screen is something new we want to implement due to your characters being on autopilot most of the time. Essentially this screen will let you customize each skill in a way that lets you tell describe when and how it's used by the character. For example, you could set up a healing skill to only trigger when a nearby ally or yourself is below 75%. This screen might take longer than the others to get just right but we think it'll be worth it and provide a valuable tool for the player.

37 comments:

Please do so we can choose for each char, which wepon they got :DAnd a bug: When you are changing the look of the hero, and you press on the idle button(when it is allready pressed) it will start the animation over, insted of doing nothing

This is like 10. time i go to this webside, just to see this answer. It is hard to belive that with a lot of players playing, a mortal like me can be the first one to find a bug in one of your games. And i have been trying since i started playing your games (back when max level in PTD was 20)

I've seen one of the chars using both fire and shadow skills (at least the skills icons he/she had were from shadow and fire skills)

Another question... when an enemy is at melee range, why does the hero continues releasing kunais, instead of using melee attacks)

And... a final question... are we going to have ranger attackers, like archers or gunners?? (these classes could have an increased attack range, and also and slightly increased attack power against far-range enemies, and decreased attack power against melee range enemies (they would attack with a small 1H weapon, like a dagger)

The 3rd and fourth characters that you can choose on the Party Screen pick their skills randomly, so they can sometimes end up with a mix of fire and shadow skills.

The enemy may be just out of range and that's why he's using the kunai. Another reason could be that they are actually attacking another enemy further away, which can happen if you are Focus Firing on a specific enemy.

There will definitely be ranged weapons and classes. We just don't have any animations/weapons for them yet except the kunai which is an example of a throwing ranged weapon that went well with the swing animation. There will of course be other ranged weapons like bows, guns, etc as well.

Yep, we'll have more eventually. It's worth noting that creating a new race involves an absolutely huge amount of work for the graphics because all the animations and equipment basically have to be re-drawn in order to fit the figure of the new race. It's an unfortunately downside to our set up but there's no good way around it other than making the new race's shape identical to the human shape, which would be lame.

I have a couple of Questions and suggestions.Suggestion 1. A hurt animation or at least a character getting stunned for half a second before he/she can attack.

Suggestion 2. Make it so when you are carrying a character the screen moves to wherever your mouse is like in PTD because it get annoying when I have to drop my character, move the screen manually, and pick up my character again.

Suggestion 3. A "Help" page or a tutorial so newer players can understand how to play the game and make teams.

Question 1. Why is the Civilian holding a sword if she can't attack?

Question 2. Can you give a brief description of what the numbers next to the skills mean?

S1. We'll be adding an animation for that at some point in the future.S2. I'll add that to the list.S3. That will probably be handled through the use of tool tips or text that shows up for each screen.

Q1. It was just overlooked. :P We'll take it out next release.Q2. The numbers on the skill slots are just indicating what slots are still available. Since we only have 2 skills on each character right now that leaves skill slots 3-5 still open.

As far as the background logo, having it look that way is very intentional because we don't want to make it look like a finished game to anyone new that may be playing for the first time. Remember this is pre-alpha, it's very very early and we want to make sure anyone who plays that it will see that as soon as they start.

Hi Dan & San! (Put Dan first since he never gets put first XD)I noticed that you don't have links for an HTD wiki in the Ptd Fan Links/Faq section (you should get rid of the ptd so you can use it for HTD too). http://herotowerdefense.wikia.com/wiki/DaggersI think you should add this as the wiki in that section. If not, I totally understand, but, please, consider it. We need a little help, too, so anybody scrolling down the comments, please check out the wiki and help.~~~~Eba77